HAIR LOSS: THE FAMILY CURSE

By Vivian Moreno, Esthetician, My Hair loss Experience

     Reminiscing of my child hood from a very young age I remember my family as close, with an even closer extended family.  Growing up I remember listening to family members talk about the ‘family curse’, Hair Loss! Today 50 years later at our family gatherings 99.9% of all of my sisters and cousins have some form of hair loss, some more than others.  I have one cousin that is almost bald, and another with a full head of hair at 60 something, with everyone else in between. 

     I guess I was getting pretty close to bald, and would not even have notice if on one family occasion, my cousin greeted me and asked what was going on with my hair.  That’s when I became self conscious of my predicament, and began to increasingly take notice of this on more than one occasion.  There was one time I was having a conversation with someone, and notice their eyes moving up looking up at my blank scalp.  Well, it began to effect me so much that I would limit my exposure to normal living, and that wasn’t good.  I wouldn’t want to go anywhere or do much of anything, and would say to myself, “I had the worst hair on the planet”.

     Fifteen years ago my mother of all people, started wearing wigs religiously.  She told me that her hair loss started effecting her life, just as it had mine, and wigs were an option for her. She tried on Human hair, Synthetic Hair, Long hair and Short hair.  I tried to see the light in it when my mother would get complements on her hair, and my sister and I would just look at each other knowing it was the infamous #33, The Mona Lisa Wig at $39.95.  I had to hand it to her, you could not tell she was truly wearing a wig.  My Grand Children didn’t even know her secret, they never knew she wore a wig, and always knew my mom as having a lot of hair. Last Christmas my mom stayed with them for the holidays and when she came down the stairs one morning without her wig, they were traumatized by the sight of her with almost no hair. 

     I said to myself wigs were not going to be an option for me. I WANTED MY HAIR BACK! and I wanted all my hair back…

     I decided to conduct an experiment on my scalp and keep a photo journal. I knew enough about the skin and how it worked, so I started to apply those principles to the scalp, because after all, the scalp is skin, and my hair grows out of skin. My goal was to make my scalp as healthy as possible, because my theory was that if I made my scalp healthy my hair would grow back.  This I would do by removing all and any build up that would impede hair growth thru the follicle.  I went to my husband “the Pharmacist” to design and concoct a hair and scalp serum.  The final hair serum product was 3% Minoxidil, 60% Grapeseed Extract, Açaí Extract- produced in our lab, a Japanese extract with studies behind it- Eriobotrya Japonica (Loquat) Extract, Saw Palmetto Extract, Gingko Biloba Extract, Panthenol B-5, and some impressive French Extracts noted for hair growth-, Lupinus Albus Extract, Juglans Regia (SwissWalnut) Seed Extract-from a 400 year tree, Fractionated Soy Protein in Peptide Form.  All had some study to describe increasing follicle activity with of course, the end result, new hair growth.  This concoction would be an addition to the other products designed to  be incorporated into the planned hair regimen. This was my plan, and based on everything I believe to be true about Skin Care, it should work.

      I started taking pictures Bi Weekly, then monthly, then I got crazy and would photos daily  many photos daily. There were some days that I thought it was working and some days I thought It wasn’t working at all I stayed on course and I just let it happen. My hairdressers would let me know if they felt it was getting better or not. Only sometimes they felt it was getting better. I had highs and lows. Some days I believed and some days I didn’t. I started this experiment the beginning of August 2009 and here are the results as of December 2010.

With continuing the same treatment plan, here are the most current results as of March 2, 2011.